Multiple Vonage behind one router

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YeOldeStonecat

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I've done Vonage setups where I plop the Vonage unit behind a NAT router and it works.
A friend of my wife was on the phone with her last night..and complaining about the Vonage and choppy voice and occasional drops. Wife yells over to me "Hey, Andrea is complaining about <blah blah>....and how some of their computers drop from the network..."..so I get on the phone with her. Small office, little Stinksys router, 6x computers (small office)...I ask her about the Vonage setup, cordless phones, this, that, 'n the other...saying probably need a more powerful router, one that supports QoS better..and then she mentions that they have 2x Vonage boxes.

So I'm guessing that more than 1x Vonage box behind a traditional router..cause some issues...if you want to use both at the same time? According to this link after searching their site for a bit....it is supported..
http://www.vonage.ca/help.php?article=220&category=3&nav=3
..but I'm picturing the Vonage units fighting for ports/services via UPnP on the router.
 
it could also be that they dont have enough bandwidth while using the phone.. i know i had that problem with vonage when i was using pos SBC dsl on a 384/384 connection.. if i was playing a game it would cause the phone to get all choppy because there wasnt enough bandwidth for the phone.. but i agree the first thing would be to replace the router.. or have her take all the computers off the network and have her talk on the phone for a while and just reconnect the systems as their talking and see at what point it causes the problems..
 
It can definitely be done-I run dual vonage units on my network with absolutely no issues-but I also have a fiber line. It's most likely a bandwidth or router issue. Vonage units usually choke up with weak upload speed....try seeding your torrents during a conversation and you'll see what I mean.
 
They're on cable, the same ISP I use, she didn't know which speed package. I'm going to stop by their office this afternoon...see what they have for a router (probably just a home grade little Linky), measure their speed..see which package they have. It's a small construction company, so I figure they have some beefy e-mails going back 'n forth too...drawings, etc. I'll try to get a good biz grade router in their that has decent QoS, flip their current wireless router to hang off in AP mode. See if they're using 2.4 cordless phones. Only thing I'm not sure about...multiple vonage boxes behind same router..does that usually mean problems?
 
i doubt they would conflict with each other since they act as their own router just like if you connected 2 routers to a primary router they would all work separately and be seen as a normal device on the main router.. you could try changing the channels on the wireless AP if they are using 2.4ghz cordless phones.. but unless they are some old wireless phones i doubt they would cause a problem..
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
They're on cable, the same ISP I use, she didn't know which speed package. I'm going to stop by their office this afternoon...see what they have for a router (probably just a home grade little Linky), measure their speed..see which package they have. It's a small construction company, so I figure they have some beefy e-mails going back 'n forth too...drawings, etc. I'll try to get a good biz grade router in their that has decent QoS, flip their current wireless router to hang off in AP mode. See if they're using 2.4 cordless phones. Only thing I'm not sure about...multiple vonage boxes behind same router..does that usually mean problems?
Click to expand...

I run 2 vonage units behind both a WRT160N and WRT54G, both running dd-wrt. Absolutely no issues whatsoever, but like I mentioned I have a great internet connection.
 
m3ta1head said:
It can definitely be done-I run dual vonage units on my network with absolutely no issues-but I also have a fiber line. It's most likely a bandwidth or router issue. Vonage units usually choke up with weak upload speed....try seeding your torrents during a conversation and you'll see what I mean.
Click to expand...


yep even with comcasts VOIP allocates 384kbps up and down just for 1 phone line when its active..

btw which cable company do they use and does that company have digital phone service?
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
i doubt they would conflict with each other since they act as their own router just like if you connected 2 routers to a primary router they would all work separately and be seen as a normal device on the main router...
Click to expand...

That's what I'm not sure about...I'm guessing the Vonage box makes itself available through a router via UPnP ....tickling the main router for SIP stuff. I'm probably wrong with how I envision it...but I see it like..just like if you were doing port forwarding....you can port forward to <this> LAN IP, or you can port forward to <that> LAN IP...but not both at the same time.

But..m3t@l over there say he as that setup running no probs....so I'll stick with it, I'll just toss whatever junker router they have, and get a beefier one in there, and have them upgrade their cable account...I'll wager they're on the budget account with a 384 upload, this ISP offers other packages with 768, 1 meg, 1.5 megs, and 2 megs..for uploads.
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
btw which cable company do they use and does that company have digital phone service?
Click to expand...

It's a smaller cable ISP in a few states on the east coast...Metrocast. They're quite slow and pricey compared to others like Comcast. But yes they do offer their own phone package. Might be a good option since it's for a business...and I'd think a local ISP would have better/more reliable phone service than Vonage. For not all that much more money.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
It's a smaller cable ISP in a few states on the east coast...Metrocast. They're quite slow and pricey compared to others like Comcast. But yes they do offer their own phone package. Might be a good option since it's for a business...and I'd think a local ISP would have better/more reliable phone service than Vonage. For not all that much more money.
Click to expand...

Vonage is only as reliable as your internet connection is.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
It's a smaller cable ISP in a few states on the east coast...Metrocast. They're quite slow and pricey compared to others like Comcast. But yes they do offer their own phone package. Might be a good option since it's for a business...and I'd think a local ISP would have better/more reliable phone service than Vonage. For not all that much more money.
Click to expand...


i would have them look into using the isp's phone.. usually providers have discounts when you use multiple services or use a business service.. worth a shot to see if they will discount it or not..
 
have them swap to the Comcast biz cable and the Comcast VOIP. Get rid of Vonage Crap.

probably save them money the first year.
 
OK I'm here...wrt54g v8
7,000/768 cable connection.
3x...yeah...THREE...Vonage boxes.
Can get 2 online..3rd never wants to.
 
Correction...4...LOL..she goes "Oh wait..there's another vonage box for the kitchen counter guy...other side of the office"
 
Sounds like they are using the Vonage routers almost as extensions for each phone. What about suggesting some sort of Asterisk based PBX? You can get a SIP number and a physical number for cheaper than 4x Vonage monthly cost. It would be even more professional too because they can record some greeting for callers as well.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
OK I'm here...wrt54g v8
7,000/768 cable connection.
3x...yeah...THREE...Vonage boxes.
Can get 2 online..3rd never wants to.
Click to expand...


yeah they dont have enough upload bandwidth for 4 vonage phones.. at a minimum they would need 1mbit up and being a construction company and transfering a lot of data they would want a minimum of 2mbit upload.. but like the other guy suggested and i was going to suggest but didnt know if there was comcast in your area.. if they are in the area i would contact them about getting a business connection which i believe you can have a router just for running multiple phone lines.. and you can get it in a package that should save them a lot of money.. with the business line they can get 16/2 for like 55-60 dollars or 25/2 for 80 or 90 dollars.. no bandwidth limits either..
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
OK I'm here...wrt54g v8
7,000/768 cable connection.
3x...yeah...THREE...Vonage boxes.
Can get 2 online..3rd never wants to.
Click to expand...

Honestly, that's plenty of upload for vonage. If you do any testing, you'll find most VOIP connections rarely go above 64k. That's the speed I get capped at here in Oz, and my dual VOIP connections (iiNet and ViaTalk) have no voice quality issues when capped, and that's with 300ms of latency back to the sip server in Chicago for ViaTalk. Now traffic on top may cause call quality issues, but you shouldn't have any connection issues.

I'd bet the issue lies with the SIP port configuration on the vonage devices. Virtually all VOIP boxes want to use ports 5060/5061, so having 4 devices trying to use these UDP ports behind the router is probably what's breaking things. Since the vonage boxes all download their settings from the vonage server, just contact vonage and see if they can change the SIP ports on some of the devices. Getting two of the devices changed to 5062/5063 will probably do it.

Though I'm sure a 4 line voip gateway would be a much better idea, or something like Asterix as mentioned above.
Though really,
 
JBark said:
I'd bet the issue lies with the SIP port configuration on the vonage devices. Virtually all VOIP boxes want to use ports 5060/5061, so having 4 devices trying to use these UDP ports behind the router is probably what's breaking things. Since the vonage boxes all download their settings from the vonage server, just contact vonage and see if they can change the SIP ports on some of the devices. Getting two of the devices changed to 5062/5063 will probably do it.,
Click to expand...

That's along the line of what my gut instinct was telling me....in the earlier posts of this thread.

So yesterday when I got there....only 2x of the 4x Vonage units were working, since they did some re-arrangement of the office 2 weeks ago. And they've been having problems with the computers on the network also, frequent "disconnect/reconnects" to the network.

What I found..1x of the Vonage units was uplinked backwards..the yellow port was uplinked to a switch on the network, instead of the blue port. Vonage boxes being a little NAT router themselves....DHCP and LAN IP....getting in a cat fight with the Stinksys wrt54g.

Also they had a cheap little 8 port Nutgear switch...all Vonages plugged into that, and then uplinked to the wrt54g..with other 3 wrt ports filled from PC uplinks.

I tried to update their wrt54gv8 to DD....but it repeatedly failed. With the recommended micro they have on their page.

Ethernet wiring was also poorly done. Shoddy terminations.

I think what I'll do, try to get an RV082 in there to take over as their primary router, which can also eliminate the need for the little Nutgear switch. Put the Vonage uplinks on a separate VLAN (probably not necessary for such a small network), and flip their wrt to AP mode.
 
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